I almost missed an opportunity. You see, us radio people are always looking for ways to tie things together. For example, if I was playing Blue Moon, it would be cool to follow it with Moon Over Georgia. Then I could follow that with Georgia On My Mind. Then I could follow that with Mind Over Matter, etc… For some reason we find little things like that cool, even though we might be the only one who gets it.

On the drive to drop the kids off at school, I was thinking about the day. I knew the blog that was scheduled was the 2000th blog. That meant the Movie Music Monday post would be Blog 2001. It was then that it hit me that 2001 was a movie and had one of the most recognized classical music pieces as its theme.

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey used many familiar classical music pieces in the soundtrack. Kubrick had said that he wanted the movie to be more of a nonverbal experience for audiences. As a matter of fact, about half of the music in the film appears either before the first line of dialogue or after the final line. Almost no music is heard during any scenes with dialogue.

Music in the film includes The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, György Ligeti’s Requiem, and Also sprach Zarathustra (sometimes translated “Thus Spake Zarathustra” or “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). It was composed by Richard Strauss. It was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s work of the same name.

The song was so popular that Elvis Presley used it to open his concerts in the 1970’s. The BBC used it in their coverage of the moon landing. It appears in the James Bond film Moonraker. Following in Elvis’ tradition, Blink-182 uses it to open their concerts. Wrestler Ric Flair even used it for his entrances.

So in celebration of this being the 2001st blog post, here is Also sprach Zarathustra.

The originally scheduled Movie Music Monday post will follow shortly.